The Good, Bad, and Avoided At All Costs
It is that time again. Please route all discussion of teachers and classes for Spring '08 to this thread. Also a friendly reminder to try and limit using names of professors, so that they don't have to show up on a google search. Hilarious and rude nicknames OK.
For my part, don't take tax at 8:10 (AM). Ever.
For my part, don't take tax at 8:10 (AM). Ever.
Labels: 0L/1L Advice, Classes/Professors, Professor Ratings
posted by McWho at 9:25 AM
93 Comments:
Take M&A in High Tech. The prof is cool, the readings not too intense and the material is relevant for today's marketplace.
I second 10:08. M&A is a very manageable and interesting course. A good choice for 1Ls looking for a two-unit course to take along with a 3 or 4 unit course for spring.
I'll third M&A. BUT. just fyi - the takehome. was. really. hard. totally caught me off-guard.
I don't know how to ask my questions w/o using prof names (because many are new--or at least I don't recognize their names).
Anyone know anything about Gevurtz for Corporations and Amann for civ pro II? I think Amann is teaching one of the con law classes now, so maybe one of her students can weigh in. Thanks in advance.
i have amann for con law and really like her. she seems to really enjoy teaching, and she's very organized, which i think for CPII would be a major plus.
that said, CPII with bundy is a really good class. well, "really good class" implies the subject matter is interesting, which it's not, but i guess that's not the point of you question ...
Comparative Law... good class or no?
fyi - class action notice re: fees - http://www.law.berkeley.edu/news/LuquettaClassNotice.pdf
Re: CPII, 1Ls should keep in mind something I didn't know at all: CPI and CPII are completely different classes. I never got into CP I because I thought it was really dry with a bunch of arbitrary rules about how lawyers act, where they file cases, how to do a depo, what summary judgment is, etc. CP II is completely different, it's really a form of con law: the distribution of federal jurisdiction, whether a state can exercise power over an individual, etc. It's got a lot of con law and first principles and legal philosophy beyond it, which you can't really say for Rule 11. So don't be scared. It's fun and interesting, and Bundy is the best.
which evidence advocacy should i take?
Patrick, I think it depends on who you have as your professors for those courses. If you get someone who is going to assign a bunch of reading and/or cold call, then they will be more work. I don't know who is teaching con law in the spring, but I have ch*per (good call on the * thing) now and the reading load isn't bad at all.
Maybe someone can weigh in on Am*nn's style of teaching/reading load since she is teaching CPII in the spring?
re: comparative law
class itself: *meh*
but there's no final...only a mere 20 pp paper.
CPII MUST be taken with bundy. there is no other.
not tht i have any real way to compare...
Info Privacy? Antitrust
but if bundy isn't teaching it when we want to take it, that's a problem
It just means you want to take it at the wrong time.
antitrust is a great class, and shelansk* is a great teacher. fairly heavy reading at points, but no cold calls. his exams are really straightforward.
Antitrust is ++ good!!
Anyone know anything about Local Government law or Legislation? I hate the idea of going to an 8:30 class but if the prof is worth it...
antitrust-excellent
legislation-was a huge help for me externing last summer and prof couldn't be more charming
tall*y-intense, but good prof
lest*r-don't know if she's teaching this semester, but she rocks
armen-could we get a link to the last thread on this topic?
In terms of phase I/phase II sign-up strategy . . . are Antitrust and Legislation safe bets to leave for Phase II? Do they fill up enough that some people don't get in?
Antitrust is a good one to sign up for in Phase I. Now that Tom has endorsed it in here, it's an even better bet that it will fill up - See, e.g., Securities Regulation.
Also, McWho, I really like the 8:10 tax! It frees up the rest of my day, and The Lazer is growing on me - even though he regularly holds us over.
Legislation is awesome. Material is interesting and actually useful (I used it over the summer, and at least some of my classmates did), prof is interesting enough to keep a 8:30 class fairly lively and funny to boot. And the reading load is moderate-to-light. Should be a required class.
I have to chime in here. PH is a great professor (both as a teacher and a scholar), and as chair of the hiring committee he's been doing a great job bringing in talent to Berkeley Law (just rolls right off the tongue). With that said, I loathed, nay despised Leg. It's the most useless class...and I took legal accounting!!!!
Part of the problem might be that I took it as a 2L, which means the rocket hands of the 1Ls were getting on my nerves. Second, anything that is of substance in that class can be learned in 2 hours, perhaps less. Learn the canons of statutory interpretation (appendix in the back of the book) and PH's funnel. Voila. You're done. That's legislation right there.
I also don't get how the class can possibly help anyone (yes I'm that absolute). Shephardize the statute. Voila. Oh and I should note that after January 31st, I didn't go to class and did learn everything in 2 hours.
Anyone have anything to say about Bib3r's property class? His evals suggest that the workload is high, just wondering how high.
for those taking evidence + evidence advocacy this semester...is evidence ad. useful?
It's so-so, helpful because you get a chance to actually get up and do exams, but at the same time it might be just as useful to figure all this stuff out on your own with a couple people.
Does anyone have any advice on the other skills classes? Are any of the professors particularly good or bad? It's my last semester and I would like to take a skills class, but don't want to dread it.
By the way, I loved Liu for Con Law and I heard that the woman teaching civ pro II is really good. I wouldn't avoid her just because it's not bundy. I thought Bundy was good, but some people did not like his style at all and were miserable all semester.
I hope some stellar people in Antitrust next semester will revive Antitrust Happy Hour after class on Thursdays at Henry's. Bonus points for crashing all the "getting to know you" events for 1Ls.
Local Gov is useful if you're interested in local government law. I know that sounds rather obvious, but think about it--if you're interested in working with a city attorney's office or in land use, it's helpful. It covers some rather random but useful topics--preemption and 1st Amendment come to mind. If you're just looking for an easy 2-credit class though...you'll probably be bored out of your mind.
I didn't have B*ber for property, but his Public Lands class made me excited to come to class in my last semester.
Patent Litigation is an impressive class. You will know much more coming out than you did going in. You will be valuable at your summer job.
I did, however, work more for that class than any other at Boalt. Not for the faint of heart.
Any info for D*Leo, teaching partnership tax in the spring?
What about Intro to IP. Should you avoid this class unless your gung-ho about being an IP lawyer?
I think intro to IP is useful even for those not wanting to go into IP. It's a cutting-edge area of law, widely talked about, and becoming increasingly important.
I agree with Jennnna: you will be bored out of your mind in local government law. The readings and lectures are scattered, and long. And the professor, while very nice, is not a dynamic speaker. Once you pick your paper topic and get going on that you can probably work on it during class. Be warned, however, the professor is into class participation when it comes to grading. If you work hard on your paper but don't participate in class you're pretty much guaranteed a P.
if you dont care about IP at all, intro to IP will be a real challenge, especially b/c there are a lot of ppl in it who do care.
that said, i learned more in that class than any other class at boalt. if you plan to work at a firm this summer as a 1L, it is indispensable.
I had Al Del3o for two classes. He is charming, hilarious, well-dressed, and keeps a low-pressure classroom ambiance. He's great for anyone who came to law school to major in business, so to speak.
Seriously, take his class. Pship tax...no comment. Ok, i'll comment, it's a b*%(h but certainly worth it.
I'd avoid Corporations with the professor notorious for his white jeans. He fancies himself exceptionally witty and cute, devoting far more attention to his thrice-weekly stand-up comedy routine than his pedagogy.
G*vurtz is teaching it in the spring. Any word on him?
Is the link for the course enrollment count functioning this semester? The link to the right is telling me page not found...
Intro to IP for non-IP dorks - I say go for it. Interesting subject matter , a real strength of Boalt, and Menell puts a lot of heart into his pedagogy. Van H. next fall is a great teacher too, though I've heard it's more work since she cold calls.
Intro to IP absolutely necessary for working at a firm 1L? no idea where that came from, perhaps at in an IP practice.
If you're worried about courseload, intro to IP is split into two parts - patent and soft IP - so 1Ls can satisfy their two elective requirement this way.
It's good to know that I took intro to IP last spring and only got 4 credits, and now it's split into two parts so you can get 5. Wonderful.
Are there hard copies of the class schedule for Spring sitting in our lockers yet? I have on pajamas and am sipping a beer and would hate to take a trip to Boalt for no reason.
They are in our lockers.
Still might not be worth a trip, though.
;)
Isn't the law school just being passive-aggressive when they do things like offer con-law to 1Ls for five credits? I mean, just make it unavailable instead of taunting us with the requirement to throw another class on top of the three required plus the five-credit, work intensive con-law.
i assume course enrollment isn't working yet cause people can't sign up yet? or can they? if so, i must have gotten really cheated with my telebears appointment time...
Anyone know anything about Energy Regulation & the Environment?
How about Poverty Law with Selbin? It looks very interesting -- but is this just going to be your typical Berkeley extremist far-left perspective on how fucked up and racist all of America is? Or would a center-left student feel comfortable and be able to contribute?
Advice on Con Law with y00/c00ter for con law & development? Looks like it satisfies the writing requirement.
Armen, It's PF, not PH. If you didn't go to class after Jan. 31, how do you know it was such a bad class? Legislation is one of those "this is why I'm in law school" classes, like Con. Law. You learn how the Supreme Court justices think - how they interpret the law. What could be more interesting? And it's useful to boot. Can't say enough about the class and the professor.
Ugh. You sound like those rocket hands that made me vomit the few times I attempted to go to class. Here's the class in a nutshell: Scalia thinks only the language of the statute is relevant. Stevens thinks Wikipedia can shed light on every statute. PF thinks Scalia is full of it. Now let's look at 500 cases.
I stopped going after case no. 2.
Armen's totally right about Leg with Frickey. (Is it so bad if someone can Google this on the Internets?). It's a 4-week class stretched into 12. You hear the same thing again & again. And then the final is just interpreting two statutes as part of a poorly written test, with no rhyme or reason to it, and I think grades are a total crapshoot as well. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting stuff and certainly valuable. But the rest of the malarkey makes it a poor choice, in my humble opinion.
Armen, I was not a rocket hand. Why do you have to make things so negative on here? Suddenly remembering why I stopped commenting. non-anonymously yours, Alice
Why am I so negative? Why do birds have feathers? Why does our foreign policy suck? Some things are just inherently the way they are.
It could also be because he's employed at a major Los Angeles law firm full-time now. That's been known to do it in the past.
You can't drag all this negative energy into the tournament dude.
Fair enough. ;) But I'm still not going to comment anymore. Glad you're still around Nuts n Boalts. Now get back to work!
Is there much of a functional difference between Evidence Advocacy and Criminal Trial Practice? I mean, other than what's apparent from the course descriptions?
Anyone know if it is normal to offer "Regulation of the Legal Profession" (an Ethics course) as a way to meet the writing requirement? In the official course guide, it has no "W"... yet on the Boalt website, it does have a "W" in its course description. I do not know who to believe.
and i'm back....
but only to say that Legislation most assuredly sucks. Unlike Armen I stuck it out, but mainly just because I had fun sitting wtih a fe people who made fun of the class. Oh, PF is enthusiastic and clearly smart, but his lectures were so disorganized and meandering, and he had no ability to cut short all those 1Ls sitting up front who wouldn't put their hands down. The whole experience was like going to a movie that turns out to be terrible, but instead of just leaving you stick around through the whole thing because it's terribleness actually makes it kind of fun, and gives you something to talk about later.
Oh, and everyone complained about the final afterwards, so at least it has that going for it.
Like many others, I disagree with Max and Armen. Legislation, which I took as a 1L, was extremely useful for my job over the summer. I don't recall many 1L gunners in the class either, so maybe we were all in different classes? I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Second the white jeans comment so much I can't even say. Worst class/prof/teacher I have EVER had. Period. Enthusiasm and self-love do not a competent instructor make.
ok, "white jeans" doesn't help the rest of us much.. can we get a starred out name? pretty please?
with Dnton, ev advocacy and crim trial practice are essentially the same class. with other profs, ev advocacy may be more civil, and may end up being fairly different. the prof matters much more than the course description.
More on Leg. It sounds like we might have taken different classes, since when I took it (last year), I didn't see any 1L gunners. Or 1Ls speaking, for that matter.
Know it for what it is - more of a skills course than a doctrinal one, where you learn the skill (e.g. leg interp) by doing it over and over again in slightly different situations, with different factors (agency deference, major canons, textualist arguments, leg history arguments). Obviously, for some people, that's disorganized and boring (when I took it, Frickey warned on the first day: a lot of people will find this class boring). For others, it's a way to get a slightly more nuanced view of statutory interpretation.
And if Armen stopped going to class after the second case, he's judging the class based on what, two days?
the white jeans comments refer to t*lley, i believe (never had him, but heard many speak of the jeans).
also, the comments about 1L gunners in legislation have to do with many perceiving the 2008 class/3Ls as being very gunnerish in their 1L year.
A general comment on this discussion of course advice: isn't this what the course evaluations should be? one person's opinion on a class is a pretty poor sample, clearly people disagree. Would suck to sign up for a class just because the one person who liked it last semester found the time to recommend it here.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the course evals we fill out at the end of semester should ALL be posted. Currently it's up to the profs to decide, which explains why every course rates at the top end. The teaching eval website explains that this is due to state employment laws, but I think if the students ran the evals themselves, we could publish everything. How about it BHSA?
Yeah, I've said it before and I'll say it again: a barely functioning Neanderthal student government composed of drop-outs from Chico State could (and has) managed to run a student eval system at other schools. Why its beyond BHSA is beyond me.
disagree with the t*lley/white pants comments--i enjoy the class and his enthusiasm
11:35 - I'm not at all surprised that BHSA can't figure out how to set up a student evaluation system. Has anyone noticed that they don't do a goddamn thing all year? It seems almost beyond their abilities to run their own elections and send out a periodic email.
By the way, have any 3Ls (or alums) noticed that BHSA is constantly elected on an unopposed slate? BHSA never promises any action or improvement because they are guaranteed to be elected.
Of course some poor sucker (or two) may run against for a particular position, but I have yet to see anyone elected who is not on the dominant slate.
Maybe some current 1Ls and 2Ls who are actually interested in being part of a functioning student government should think about putting a campaign together next year, even if the only result is to make the default slate actually campaign for student votes.
My public service for the semester:
Avoid immigration law next term. In general, avoid any teacher who refuses to post his or her evals. There is a reason why they aren't posted...
Not to distract from the scintillating debate on Legislation, but has anyone out there taken Local Government Law? Good, bad, somewhere in between?
I guess an alternative to relying on the Boalt ratings, or arguing about whether BHSA should make a professor rating webpage, would be to encourage Boalties to use one of those websites like ratemyprofessor dot com. They have an entry for Boalt (or the Law department at Berkeley, at least), and a few people have written ratings.
9:18, a few people already commented above on local government law.
MRP, as far as using a website to rate our professors, isn't that what we are already doing here? the point of making student eval comments available to everyone is to avoid the problem of only having a handful of opinions on a prof available.
The Corps prof is great, I don't see what all the negativity is about.
I agree that "white pants" professor is great. Showy, but puts more time into preparing for his classes, and takes them more seriously, than any other professor I've had at Boalt (and there are certainly other professors who also put a lot of time into their classes). That matters to me more than whether all his jokes are funny.
1:39 - yes, I agree that is what we are doing here, but I suggested a website so the comments could be organized and accessible - instead of the current situation, where you have to dig through the multiple "course advice" threads on N&B in order to find an opinion or two on Skl*nsky's crim pro class.
Any thought on Employment Law w/ Tru3? Seems like the evals were good, but it's one day a week for 3 hours...eeeh.
MRP, 1:39 here.
Good point.
FYI, 'white pants' prof also goes by the name of 'buttons' in some circles. For reasons that are probably obvious and consistent w/ the egomaniac persona.
I liked Legislation a lot, too. Way more interesting than most doctrinal classes at Boalt, where it's basically a race to get through the Gilberts outline as quickly as possible. The education at a great school are in the professor's anecdotes, methinks.
I also agree that the corporations ("white pants") professor is great.
my undergrad did this:
http://www.culpa.info/
It was really useful website for picking classes.
I think Boalt should do something similiar.
Can we bump this thread soon? I think most of us enroll Tuesday.
Employment tends to be a little low-energy in the third hour, but the prof does a good job covering a lot of topics that don't get touched on in other labor classes (workplace torts, what constitutes an employment contract) and provides a solid survey of other topics that have their own course (discrimination, unionization). Worth taking if you have an interest in the topic - might not be if you're planning to take a LOT of other overlapping classes.
Anyone know anything about w@gm@n for animal law>?
Does anyone know if Swif* cold calls in her evidence class?
If I recall correctly, she let's you know the week before that you are going to be on call. I will also add that her evidence course is difficult. But her teaching method always sticks with you. If you put a modicum of effort into her class, you will not forget the large points of evidence law. This has paid dividends in my present calling...something I can't say about legislation.
Also there's something to be said about a professor who rides a moped to class whilst keeping perfect hair.
Armen's right about Sw*ft. She only cold calls the 1Ls to keep them reading. For Evidence, you know ahead of time when you are on call. And you are only on call for one week. Word to the wise, she goes down the alphabet so if you are an A or B, you will be on call the first week.
Oh, and the class is hard. I am not a slacker either.
For the record, it's only really common to cold call 1Ls. Some profs do it to 2Ls and 3Ls, but most stop after 1L year. So there is hope, my dear 1Ls.
Petrine for evidence? What's up with her?
Has anyone taken Maria E's immigration policy course?
I have taken M.E.'s Imm Pol class and I don't recommend it. I thought the class was pretty boring and don't feel like I learned much about Immigration Law or policy.
On an unrelated note, does anyone know when a final would be for a class that ends halfway through the semester? Specifically, I'm talking about the two parts of Intro to IP and wondering when the final for the first part might be...Thx
Hey, can anyone tell me about Patent Law this semester, Prof. M? Is the TH manageable? Thanks
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